Thanks for a great video. I do like it when you do real solitaire chess, especially when you go "wow! i never saw that!", it just reassures me.

Anyway, the following are a few things I noted which I need to remember:

Your first reaction is usually to protect an attacked piece directly. However when you study grandmasters, you see how they often defend pawns or pieces indirectly. Often the best move is one which improves your position and has the effect of protecting the attacked piece or pawn.

Premature trading is one of the most common mistakes on every level including grandmaster level. As you go lower and lower you see this problem all the time; 1200 players exchange almost every time they can, as you go higher they exchange less and less frequently.

One of the lessons you will learn if you go over a lot of grandmaster games is that pawn weaknesses are not as important as activity of the pieces. I try to emphasise this in my lessons, because in my opinion, this is one of the biggest problems with club players; they always overestimate pawn weaknesses and always underestimate the activity of the pieces.

Great game and video. It got me wondering where Black went wrong. Black's 17th move, using the queen to protect the pawn, looked odd to me. Isn't it a one of Steinitz' principles to defend with the least amount of force? I would have tried Re8.

What would you recommend for White after 17. Bh3 Re8 18. Ng2 Rc7 when Black has two strong ideas, ... Rd7 and ... Qc8? If 19. Bf4 Rd7 20. Qb3 g5 21. Be3 h5 and the threat of 22. ... g4 is hard to meet. It looks like White has to retreat his knight back to e1.

I'm a big advocate of "Solitaire Chess" - playing through a master game while trying your best to guess each move the winning side made. Chessgames.com has a great "Guess the Move" chess training utility that automates this process. You can suggest any game to be added, so I requested this Aronian-Bagaturov game to be included. It should be ready to play w/in the hour. FYI, here's a short description of the Guess-the-Move utility:

It's almost like playing against a grandmaster. Your "opponents" will be some of the strongest players in history. When your GM opponent makes a threat, you'll have to decide how to counter it. And to win the game, you'll have to decide how and when to strike!

More than a training tool, it's also a game: you accumulate points based on the merits of your guesses, and at the end, you'll receive a final total score. You can gauge your strength by comparing your score against those of other Chessgames members.

Studying grandmaster games by guessing what move comes next is an excellent way to get better. Some of the world's greatest chess coaches recommend this technique as one of the key methods to improve your chess. After all, if you can almost always guess what move a grandmaster will play, then you are effectively a grandmaster yourself!

This type of tool would be a GREAT addition to chess.com. I wish the developers would add something like this to our site!

Gregory, what a great educational illustration for players looking to improve.

I just noticed earlier today that in one of my games I had won a small amount of material through use of the initiative, but once that attack had served its purpose, the positional feel of the game had changed and in order to continue to hold (and extend) the advantage, I needed to step back and spend time maneuvering my pieces to better serve what the current position called for.

This video is a great follow up, and it goes to show that the idea also functions nicely sometimes when you're in a position of advantage.....instead of overextending an attacking position for the sake of continuation, considering how to be patient and repurpose your pieces along the way can be invaluable.

nicschne

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Solitaire Chess - Part 4: Improving a Bad Position

Grandmaster Kaidanov is back this weekend with another immensely popular Solitiare Chess video lecture! Today he reviews a game by a much younger Aronian, and he highlights the young Armenian's ability to play patient, simple moves that change his worse (or at least tough) position into a better one. Slowly improving your bad pieces, with discipline, is not easy! Kaidanov suggests you improve this skill by trying to guess Aronian's moves along the way!

Considered one of "the" premier chess trainers in America for more than ten years, Chess.com is very proud to add Grandmaster Gregory Kaidanov to its list of prestigious Video Authors. Arguably one of the strongest GMs never to have won the US Championship, GM Kaidanov's list of accomplishments does however include first place finishes in many other major events, including first place at both the World Open and US Open in 1992. A certified FIDE Senior Trainer, his reputation as a chess coach precedes him internationally. Gregory currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky with his wife Valeria and their three children.

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